In early February 2023, the game industry annual conference held in Guangzhou was crowded.
As the most important first industry conference after the pandemic, the 2023 Game Industry Annual Conference attracted 2,700 registrations, far exceeding the scale of previous conferences. In the speech session of the conference, Yang Fang, deputy director of the Publishing Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department, said:
"Over the past year, the game industry has overcome the adverse impact of the new crown epidemic, responded to policy calls, implemented management requirements, bravely shouldered responsibilities and missions, and acted proactively, significantly improved product quality, made the industrial structure more reasonable, made more prominent social responsibilities, and accelerated the pace of going overseas, making positive contributions to promoting the economic and social development of the mainland, enriching people's spiritual and cultural life, and promoting Chinese culture to go global."
Compared with the past, this is undoubtedly a more comprehensive affirmation of the game industry. The same attitude was reflected in the official media, and within a week, Xinhua Daily Telegraph, a subsidiary of Xinhua News Agency, published an article entitled "Don't ignore the technological value of the game industry", which affirmed the positive role of games from a technical point of view:
"We have noticed that international competition around the gaming industry is raging. With the improvement and landing of regulations on the protection and anti-addiction of minors, the mainland game industry has gradually bid farewell to 'barbaric growth' and should shoulder a more important mission. Relevant departments and practitioners may be able to further face up to the technological value of games, seize the layout of the next-generation Internet, and continuously enhance the influence of the mainland in international competition. ”
What makes practitioners in the game industry more optimistic comes from the release of stable version numbers every month. Compared with the game industry's "2022, when revenue and users first fell for the first time", the game industry in 2023 can indeed be expected to usher in a recovery, and will also usher in higher quality development in terms of type and quality - at least for game manufacturers with rich product lines and many game companies that have obtained version numbers.
Today, Tencent Games' annual SPARK 2023 annual conference was held online, and the whole industry is paying close attention to what new products Tencent will have and how it will affect the increasingly crowded game market in China this year. At the press conference, Tencent's self-developed or released products that have obtained version numbers, such as "Edge of Rebirth", "White Night Aurora", "White Thorn Corridor", "MapleStory: The Legend of Maple", and the increasingly rare end-game "Valorant" and "Ark of Destiny" in the domestic PC market in recent years were all unveiled, and most of them also determined the time for testing or launching this year.
The conference also featured the latest progress of five "Game Technology" projects. In the past two years, the "Digital Great Wall" project and the "Digital Hidden Scripture Cave" project jointly launched by Tencent Games and the cultural and cultural protection organization have been launched, and most of these cooperation have made use of high-definition digital scanning, physical rendering and global dynamic lighting of game engines, cloud gaming and other game technologies, and users can also learn more about related cultural relics through game-style interactive gameplay. In addition, Tencent Games and China Southern Airlines Xiangyi, based on the self-developed game engine capabilities, using physically realistic lighting and rendering and other game technologies, China's first fully self-developed full-flight simulator vision system will also be released next month, which was displayed at the conference.
Ma Xiaoyi, Senior Vice President of Tencent
Under the background of intensified global scientific and technological competition and increased investment in the game industry in various countries, large manufacturers have also begun to deeply explore the diversified social value of games, especially the value of science and technology, and the "re-cognition" of the essence of games has also become the general trend of the industry. In this context, as a leading manufacturer in the industry, how does Tencent Games view the role of game technology? How does Tencent view and apply new technologies such as AI in recent years? How does Tencent view the challenges it faces in the gaming business and the global market? With these questions in mind, Youyan and several other media outlets had an exchange with Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent.
The following are the main contents of the dialogue, with slight cuts and adjustments.
"Games are an industry that stands at the crossroads of culture and technology"
Questions:
You had an in-depth explanation of the concept of "game technology" at the press conference, how do you see the relationship between games and cutting-edge technology development?
Ma Xiaoyi:
I think the concept of game technology is very good. In essence, the new experiences and new effects that the game constantly pursues are based on cutting-edge technology, and in the process, the game also drives the development of new technologies, so that new technologies can be quickly and massively applied, and then feed back new technology research and development investment through the market.
Game technology can play a great role in pulling other technologies in the real world on two paths. On the one hand, the game itself is the most demanding digital cultural product that ordinary users can receive. Since entering the digital age, the most powerful computing device available to the general public may be the device used to play games. In the 70s, Atari sold tens of millions of gaming devices around the world, and tens of millions of MOS 650x CPUs went out. In the late 70s and early 80s, after Apple's personal computer came out, sales were only hundreds of thousands of units, at that point in time, was the personal computer more contributed to the CPU, or the game console contributed more? The answer could be consoles.
Since the 70s of last century, the low-cost MOS 6502 series CPU has driven the prosperity of the game industry, and the popularity of game equipment such as Atari and red and white machines has also made the CPU industry develop greatly
Therefore, it can be said that because of the emergence of games, it has led to a large-scale outbreak of the entire chip industry, and it has also brought opportunities for PCs. You can see that the connection between the game itself and technology is very direct and critical, and it can be said that this is a two-wheel drive concept. From this point on, game technology itself has always existed.
Another point is that we can see that game technology can be directly spilled over, and the game industry can directly help other industries. For example, we recently cooperated with China Southern Airlines Xiangyi to build China's first fully self-developed flight simulator vision system, which needs to do large-scale real terrain generation. In the past, it was impossible to do it by hand, and even if it was done with limited accuracy. Using Tencent's game CROS self-developed engine, as well as some of our technology and experience in game asset production, we can make a large range of real maps. Like "Peace Elite" itself is an island of 8000X8000 meters, but in fact, our technology can support an area of hundreds of square kilometers, and the scale covered by this area is enough to support training pilots in a variety of environments such as takeoff, landing, cruise, etc., including the simulation of various extreme situations, which is typical of direct output to other industries through game technology.
A flight simulator vision system displayed at the press conference
Therefore, the word game technology can be said to describe the relationship between the game itself and technology very vividly. It is also inevitable that it will be noticed and discussed. Because human beings often need a process to establish an understanding of things, accompanied by global attention and discussion of cutting-edge technologies such as chips and AI; At the same time, with the spillover of game technology into many industries, more substantive and tangible specific projects have emerged, reminding and inspiring more people to understand game technology.
Overall, our understanding of game technology is that with the development of science and technology and the continuous improvement of user demand, the game industry has gradually accumulated and precipitated a unique technical system that can simulate the real world, provide immersive experience and have rich interactive capabilities. We call the technology cluster that takes place in games to achieve a better gaming experience and continues to advance with the development of games as game technology.
Questions:
Just now you mentioned the cooperation of China Southern Airlines, we also saw projects such as "Digital Hidden Cave", "Digital Great Wall" and "Digital Axis Small Universe" at the press conference.
Ma Xiaoyi:
Technology drives the evolution of cultural expression, and we think that's what games are really doing.
As technology advances, we want to express this expression. For any industry to undergo a major transformation or advance, at least two aspects of preparation are required, one is whether the understanding is in place, and the other is whether the technological maturity has reached the critical level. For example, AIGC, which everyone has been paying attention to recently, first of all, someone must think that it is feasible and confirmed in terms of understanding, which is where Open AI is powerful. Two years ago, we talked about the concept of "super digital scenes", these scenes face the user in front, the support behind is actually game technology, reflected in the user's side, is the "super digital scene".
Why do we repeatedly say it's a digital scenario instead of a game? Because many of the scenes shown have jumped out of the game itself. The projects we just talked about such as the digital Great Wall, the digital scripture cave, and the flight simulator vision system, we feel that it is an opportunity to reflect the digital scene well, these are all realized by us with game technology, our own team collects data in the real world, digital restoration and replication, I think this can be a good demonstration of what kind of possibility we imagine the digital scene should look like.
Questions:
It's been two years since Tencent proposed the "super digital scene", when do you think the public will really agree with this concept?
Ma Xiaoyi:
Super Digital Scenario is an open reflection on the nature, value, and possibilities of games. The underlying driving force of this thinking and understanding is that we see the technological attributes of games and the trend of game technology moving forward. Moreover, the ability characteristics shown by game technology are very suitable for more social needs at present and in the future. I think the understanding of this concept needs three more progress.
First, the scene. The games we see today are still relatively single. I think it's still early days in the gaming industry.
Second, real technology. The user's experience must evolve, and there must be the development of technology. The best example is Ready Player One, where you feel like there's a VR immersion, which makes for a really different experience, and we can say that this is really a super digital scene. But today this technology has not reached this time, it will take time. We're still waiting or nurturing these technologies, and maybe when more technologies come in, we'll have more hands-on experience with the so-called super digital scene.
Finally, the content. After these technologies evolve, you need content so that people can perceive what the technology really means to you. When a new technology emerges, it takes time to show the advantages of this technology through content. As these aspects continue to evolve, the entire super digital scene will become more and more clear.
In simple terms, super digital scenarios are all possibilities built on the technology of games. Because of this thinking, the scope of our exploration has been expanded, otherwise it is difficult to imagine the emergence of game technology "crossover" projects such as the digital Great Wall, the digital scripture cave, the digital axis, and the flight simulator vision system. These collaborations seem completely unintersecting and, as traditionally understood, completely devoid of necessity. And when we think of games as a super digital scene, we can see the versatility and more possibilities of game technology, can have these practices, and the current social response is quite good.
In fact, the popularization of any new concept is a process of seeing is believing. The point is never the idea itself, but what solid practice is under this concept. When you see the application of game technology in the digitization of cultural heritage, and see the application in flight simulators, you will know that the original game can still be like this. Only by being seen can we be truly perceived and thus recognized.
The "Digital Great Wall" created by game technology allows ordinary users to understand the Great Wall and have the awareness to protect it
Questions:
From a technological point of view, the cycle changes quickly, because there are many technologies faced. With so much technology, which ones do you think are unique to the game?
Ma Xiaoyi:
If you look at so much technology, I think only games stand at the crossroads of culture and technology. The key is how to present this technology to users, and I think this will always be the essential core of the game industry. For the game industry, its biggest benefit is that we are at the forefront of users, and we can always translate the features provided by technology and culture into the best experience for players in the end, the best benefit, which I think is the essence of the game industry. Technology may change, but the position where we stand remains the same.
"We are evaluating whether we can use AI to increase efficiency at every step"
Questions:
In recent years, there are many new concepts, from VR, cloud gaming to meta-universe, AI, every round of games is on the cusp, this year is AI, to what extent do you think AI will change the game industry, where can the specific application make the game better?
Ma Xiaoyi:
Let's start with a crooked question. Every time a new technology appears, everyone will think that the game has something to do with this. Why are games and technology extremely relevant? Every technological progress in the information industry is helpful to all industries, but its response to the game may be the most direct and fast, so from this point of view, the game is an industry that can quickly get the dividends of new technologies.
Specific to AI, there are two paths. First, AI at the production end can greatly improve efficiency. With a significant increase in productivity, the level of industrialization as a whole can be raised to a higher level, and I think this can be seen in the next few years. But it may not be a step-by-step, leapfrog development, but slowly break through step by step, so the slope of growth should be steadily rising.
Second, everyone pays more attention to the gameplay level, in terms of user experience, what are the new experiences of AI? It's quite possible that it's jumping, not gradual. Because you gradually add some to the game, people don't have such a clear perception, but one day, maybe all of a sudden, you will find that a new AI-driven gameplay will appear. What is this gameplay like? I find it difficult to answer today.
The principle is this, to give an example of a 3D graphics card, I remember that when the 3D graphics card just came out, there were also many games in the industry exploring how to use it to make games, there were many puzzle games, 3D conversion puzzles, everyone felt that these games made full use of 3D technology, but finally found that players paid not for those games made specifically for 3D concepts, but games like FPS, which can make good use of 3D immersion, degrees of freedom of the game method. So maybe it's not some games that we are studying today that are directly made with AI, but that AI technology empowers or changes a certain game category, making it explode. It's hard to judge in a short time, and maybe in three or five years, we'll see more and more examples.
Questions:
Many practitioners at home and abroad have a strong sense of panic and anxiety about AI, AI may become the industrial revolution in the game circle, what do you think of the impact on the industry?
Ma Xiaoyi:
I think for the industry, it's actually more demanding. I've talked to a lot of people in the industry about these views. And then you find that what is particularly amazing is that when it comes to AI, what companies say they want to reduce is often the part of manpower that they are relatively good at. When a tool evolves, it gives the top people more room to play.
We may see more works with personal style, but ordinary products, ordinary art, do face great challenges.
Questions:
Can you expand on what applications Tencent Games have and what is the general effect now?
Ma Xiaoyi:
First of all, we are preparing the toolchain, we have disassembled the toolchain of game development in a lot of links, and we are evaluating whether each link can use AI to increase efficiency. Many links have been identified.
For a simple example, the UI design of the game we play today can already be done with AI. There are many adjustments to the original art, which can also be done with AI. Secondly, you will probably see in the future that the actions of our characters will become more and more natural, because we can now use AI to fill the gap between the characters' actions. All the toolchains, we are doing very seriously. Secondly, on the user side, we are also exploring, and in the future, we will also see some products we make that make the story and the whole city more vivid.
Since the entire toolchain can be so automated, if it is turned into a UGC tool, can users input ideas about the game and automatically generate more gameplay? Last time at GDC we were talking to companies about this, and there are examples in the industry that are entirely creative, such as the Rocket League example, can you play football with a car? This is a pure idea, in fact, players often open up such brain holes. Before your tools are powerful enough, after you have such a brain hole, you may need an experienced team of 150 people to bring this concept to life. With the blessing of AI, with a simpler tool chain, maybe one day as long as the player has this idea, he can use these AI tools to create such games, I think this is to return the game industry to the essence, the threshold for creative realization will become lower, which is a great benefit to the industry.
Questions:
Just mentioned that Tencent has made a lot of attempts and layouts in some AI aspects, do you think these long-term investments and applications will reduce the difficulty of making triple-A quality games? Or can it speed up your triple-A games?
Ma Xiaoyi:
Definitely. For example, for example, a high-quality original painting may have taken us 15 people per day to make. Now after using AI, it basically only takes about 3 hours. In fact, the amount of art is very time-consuming and labor-intensive for game development. This is just one link, if more and more links can be accelerated in the future, we think this will definitely make triple-A games and tomes have a great efficiency improvement. As for whether the cost will go down? Not necessarily. Because after everyone's efficiency increases, everyone will be in an arms race, of course, this is a good thing for players, you can see richer details, bigger world, higher quality art, for this industry, there is a step forward.
"Tencent Games is evolving from a platform company to a product company"
Questions:
The outside world is actually very curious, we talked about the moon landing plan, high potential energy products, including 3A games, everyone will think that Tencent does not have so many projects to adhere to this path? Including just said that AI will make this road simpler, I don't know if there will be these changes later?
Ma Xiaoyi:
First of all, the road is long. If you really do 3A games, you will find that this road is difficult, definitely not what everyone imagines, as long as you spend enough money to solve this problem, "banks can't make 3A games."
We still have a lot of high-quality games in the pipeline, but it's really difficult. We also have some releases, and you can see that at the end of last year we released Warhammer 40K: Dark Tide overseas, which is a very high-quality shooter. We used to have a plan to invest in start-up teams to make games, and some of these teams have some output this year, maybe the team we invested in 2019, they started the project at that time, and today it is finally made. In the next few years, we can see more and more of our domestic research and development, overseas studio research and development, as well as some high-quality games that we invest in and develop, will be on the market.
Warhammer 40K: Dark Tide
Questions:
The product breakthrough you just talked about, how do you think Tencent Games should break through?
Ma Xiaoyi:
There are many ways. Everyone asked if Tencent was very anxious about Mihayou? In fact, these external new companies provide us with good ideas. Internally, everyone knows that Tencent pays great attention to gameplay, we always believe that this is the main driving force of this industry, to expand the plate of users in this industry, a fun game core gameplay is very important.
But gameplay breakthroughs are not common, and in the absence of gameplay breakthroughs, to have more content filling, it needs to be content-driven. In this regard, Mihayou has taught the industry a good lesson, and we also have to learn this about what is content driven. I myself feel that gameplay driving and content driving are left foot and right foot, and a top game company is ultimately on both feet. As Tencent, we have laid out a route similar to this.
Questions:
Since I talked about Mihayou, I would like to talk about more details of R&D. Is it that all of Tencent's R&D mechanisms and incentive mechanisms in the past are relatively not so suitable for pendants, what do you think? If so, will there be some adjustments?
Ma Xiaoyi:
I think in fact, even if there is no Mihayou, we will have adjustments. Because you make a console game, the whole cycle can take five to six years. This cycle is significantly higher than the cycle of mobile game development. And the development cycle of mobile games is actually lengthened. If we go back to 2013 or 2014, we can develop a game in 12 months, but now we develop a mobile game, and the cycle takes at least 24-36 months. In this case, more long-term investment and thinking is needed, which is now being done.
Another topic, is it related to the long term itself? More and more, we are finding that there needs to be an accumulation in every field and track, and teams with accumulation will be more likely to seize some opportunities related to this field. How can this team stay in this area longer? I think it's a subject. We also have a lot of these teams, they have been working in many areas for many years, such as shooting and MOBA, we have accumulated a lot more than other teams. But which more tracks we need to accumulate in the future is also the question we discuss the most now.
In fact, it is more of our own method of thinking, rather than stress, saying that there is a product on the market is very good, what should Tencent do? That's not the problem. It's that when the product is good, we have to see if our approach is right.
Questions:
What do you think of Tencent Games' core competitiveness in the publishing market? Has there been an evolution from before?
Ma Xiaoyi:
I think if we talk about evolution, Tencent Games is evolving from a platform company to a product company. Back before 2015, Tencent Games existed more as a platform in China, and we can say that a platform was defined by social networks, when there were more light users. As the game market becomes more and more mature, when categories are shaping the industry, you will see the role of social networking declining, and the role of products and categories of the game itself is rising. In this process, Tencent Games conforms to this trend and needs to become a product-based company from a platform, so we invest more and focus on the game category.
"We divided the world into three different markets"
Questions:
You just mentioned about investing in overseas studios, and I remember that in the last or every interview we had, we would mention the changes in overseas studios. Looking back now, what do you think impressed you the most about the overseas studios invested by Tencent in recent years? Conversely, what has changed since investing in them?
Ma Xiaoyi:
I don't think the logic has changed, in fact, there are still a lot of studios that have shown a very good level in the last year or two. For example, last year's V Rising was a small team that we owned, and they were in Sweden. In a very small city, it's a small team of 35 people. We also saw that, just like Warhammer 40K: Dark Tide just said, they are doing it in their own areas of expertise, and they went online at the end of last year, and the results are also good. For example, Riot is good at competitive games, and Valorant has reached a very high height last year and is very successful. On the other hand, in addition to holding shares, we have also injected capital and invested in some studios, such as From Software, and the results are very good. If we pull the list, among the new games released every year, there are actually more and more games related to Tencent.
Valorant
Of course, looking at the global market as a whole, we now divide the global market into three different battlefields.
The first battlefield is China, there are almost 600 million users, China's market is just from high-speed growth to mature market transition period, you will see users for product quality requirements are getting higher and higher, in each category there are basically head companies. But new gameplay is rare.
The second battlefield is Europe, the United States, and Japan, which are mature markets in the true sense. The size of game users in this market is smaller than in China, with perhaps 500-600 million users, but the market revenue may be more than twice that of the entire Chinese market. At the competitive level, PC and console are the main force, while mobile games account for only 1/3, and many gameplay methods are also turned to a larger market after success in this market, so we have invested more PC and console game teams in this market. We want them to succeed in this market, while exploring more ways to play and help us create new categories around the world.
The third battleground, we think, is emerging markets. Emerging markets around the world are also on the rise, such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, which together have almost 1.2 billion users. With so many users, the market size may be only half that of China, but such a market is also a world where there are opportunities for new dominant gameplay.
It can be seen that these three markets are different, and we will have different layouts in these three markets and try to seize different opportunities. Of course, if these opportunities are successful, they can also be transformed into each other.
Questions:
In the past two years, Tencent's efforts to go overseas are still quite large, how do you see the pattern of overseas markets in the future? How do you plan the pace of your overseas business?
Ma Xiaoyi:
First of all, we now realize that China is moving from a high-growth market to a mature market, so we are increasingly seeing that the requirements of Chinese players for quality and taste are actually consistent with the mainstream market around the world. So first of all, we now require that the market that our internal products target is the global market, and we will not do a single market product, we pursue what this product is like in the world. Even if the product is a Chinese IP, this IP we hope to be more able to adapt to players around the world in terms of art style and gameplay, which is the first point.
Tencent's self-developed FPS game "Edge of Rebirth"
Second, we talk about the proportion of overseas games in our earnings reports every time, and in our overall proportion, it is constantly rising. We don't seek to achieve much at once, we want to see more stable and sustained growth. Overall, we want overseas markets to account for a little more than half of our total revenue.
From the perspective of the platform, first of all, in China, a large number of us are mobile game users, and mobile games are the most important market. But the PC and host platform are still very important. We can see from the survey report released by Newzoo that last year under the difficult situation of global games, the mobile game market fell by almost 10%, the console also fell by several percentage points, and the PC market rose. We can see that PCs are a relatively more defensive market.
Secondly, users are also more active. PC users account for about 20% of global gaming users, but they provide about 40% of global activity, and if you pull a daily active user, PC users may be more active.
Third, PC is also the most operationally compatible platform, which also leads to the gameplay and creativity of many games are presented on PC games, because it is more tolerant of the depth of operation, or the ability to accommodate. So it can be seen that in terms of foreign investment, we pay great attention to the ability investment on the PC and host platforms, hoping to make some ability reserves for finding the next big game or opportunity.
So overseas, in addition to the three battlefields we just mentioned, we will be more open on the platform, and we want to do it across platforms. We will do mobile games, but also a lot of PC games, hoping to find the next breakthrough point.
From the perspective of the global pattern, just said that the PC game market is very important, in fact, in the mobile game market and console games, especially console games, large companies occupy a very large advantage. Mobile (market) is because of the channel, and host is because of the channel + investment problem. On the contrary, PC games have relatively more vitality, a larger developer community, and more opportunities for small and medium-sized game companies.
We will also see a lot of opportunities overseas, such as the "V Rising" team mentioned earlier, which is a very small team, and such a team will have more opportunities on this platform. We will continue to look for opportunities in emerging markets, but we will also look at opportunities in PC and console platforms in mature markets. On the host platform, we will invest enough industrialization capacity. In the PC market, we will look at more game categories and gameplay, and will cooperate with more small and medium-sized game companies with an open mind.